Word Accessibility

Please note: All instructions below are designed for Microsoft Office 2016. If you are using
an earlier verison, these steps may or may not be appropriate. To get Office 2016,
please contact MTSU ITD software.

Word's Built-in Accessibility Checker

A great way to begin checking the accessibility of your Microsoft Word document is
to use the built-in accessibility checker. (Mac users, you must have MS Word 2016
and the August 2016 update. Previous versions don't have the built in checker.) Please Note: The accessibility checker only checks .docx files

Warning: The default style called a normal template in MS Word uses light blue heading colors
that have insufficient color contrast. Make sure to change those headings to a darker color. Here are instructions on how to change the default Normal templatemore permanently.

Heading Order

In addition to formatting headings as headings, the headings need to be used in the
correct order. Headings chunk your content, making it easier for everyone to read.
Headings are also a major way of navigating with a screen reader.

Headings must be used in the correct order for them to be useful.

Heading 1 is like the title of a book and there is just one Heading 1 per page. Heading
2s are like chapter titles. Heading 3s are sub-sections of those chapters, and so
on.

Heading order is also similar to the order of an outline.

DO NOT skip heading levels. Eg. Heading 1 straight to Heading 4 could confuse screen
reader users. Instead, only step down one level at a time.

Changing Heading appearance

Sometimes you may want to change the font and formatting of a heading style. If you
would like other headings of that same level to match these style changes throughout
your document, follow these steps:

On the Home Tab in the Styles area, right click on a Heading style

Choose Modify

Make adjustments in the style and click OK.

If you would like all future documents to keep this style, be sure to:

Word for Windows - choose "New documents based on this template" at the bottom of
the modify style window.

Word for Mac - choose "Add to template" checkbox at the bottom of the modify style
window.

Lists

Format lists as lists

Page formatting (lists, headings and links) is read aloud to screen reader users so
that the content is understood in context. If order is important in your list, make
it a numbered list. If order is not important, a bulleted list is a better choice.

Select the text that you want to make into a list.

On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, select the Number (ordered list) or Bullets (unordered list) icon.

The numbered (ordered) list in the picture above is highlighted to show that it would
be better as a bulleted (unordered) list because the order of the items is unimportant.

Multilevel lists:

To make a multilevel list in Word, type in your first list item and then click the
multilevel list icon. Continue typing your list levels knowing that Enter/Return will
take you to the next item at the same level and Tab (or clicking Increase Indent within
Word) will take you to the next indented level.

Screen reading software can pull up all of the links in a page to aid the user in
navigating the page more quickly. If a link pulled up by the screen reader is some
indecipherable URL or ambiguous phrase like, "click here" the screen reader user will
not know where that link goes.

Tables

Create data tables with column headers and alt text

Designating column headers in a table is essential to screen reader users understanding how the information is laid out. Unfortunately, Word (at this
time) cannot handle a header column, only a header row. Save yourself some time

Put your cursor in the first cell of your data table.

Go to the Insert tab and choose the Link dropdown. Choose Bookmark.

Type in a unique name for each table bookmark, beginning with "Title_". For the two tables in my example,
I have used Title_Table1 and Title_Table2.

Choose the Table Design tab and make sure the Header Row check box is checked.

Next, click on the Table Layout tab.

Click on Repeat Header Row button (I know this isn't intuitive, but it's very important to designating that top row
as the table headers.)

Right click on the table and select Table Properties. Describe the contents of the table by selecting the Alt Text tab. In the table properties window, give the table a title and provide an appropriate
description.

Please note:

Bookmarks in the first cell of tables, as shown in this YouTube Table Bookmarking video, will help screen reading software repeat the header row values for each cell below
it (super useful in not getting lost in table data!). The video also mentions some things you should not do when creating a table in a Word
document.

Microsoft Word now allows the top row and first columns to be marked as table headers!
Unfortunately, the first column headers do not export to PDF. However, if you save
the Word doc as HTML, the top row and first column headers DO export correctly!

Ensure a proper reading order in tables

Screen readersread tables from left to right, top to bottom, one cell at a time (no repeats). If
cells are split or merged, the reading order can be thrown off.

Read your table left to right, top to bottom (never repeating a cell). Does it make
sense? Screen reading software reads tables in this way.

Merged, nested, and split cells change the reading order of tables. Make sure you
construct your table in a way that accommodates good reading order.

Color

Don't use color alone to convey meaning

Don't use color alone to make a distinction, a comparison or to set something off
or apart from the rest of the web page. If you categorize something by color alone,
those who are color blind or blind will not benefit from the color distinction.

Instead, add some text that makes the element stand out to people with a vision impairment.
I.e. "Don't miss the deadline!"is better written as"****Important note: Don't miss the deadline!"because it uses asterisks, italics, and a text note to draw attention instead of color
alone.

Use sufficient color contrast

Make sure there is enough color contrast between foreground (font) color and background
color. Video: Color contrast in MS Word

For a stand-alone tool that can test things in many applications (not just Word),
try the Colour Contrast Analyzer Tool

Flashing/Blinking Content

Eliminate or limit blinking/flashing content

Any flashing/blinking content (especially content in red) can cause seizures in people
with photosensitive epilepsy as well as other photosensitive seizure disorders, so
it should be limited and used only when necessary. Web pages that do contain flashing
content, should limit the flashing to no more than three flashes per second and not
use fully saturated reds in the content.

If you do have content that flashes/blinks more than three times per second, freeze
the blinking content momentarily so it falls below the three times per second limit.

If you have a web video with a scene involving very bright lightning flashes (or other
scenes with flashes), edit the video so the lightning doesn't flash more than three
times in any one second period.

Forms & Buttons

Label form fields and buttons

We recommend Dynamic Forms or another web form solution for creating forms and not
MS Word. If you still want to use Word to create your form, start with a form template.

In order for a screen reader user to be able to fill out a form, the form needs to
be electronic and the fields need to be associated with their corresponding labels.

Forms that are created in Word often use underscores (________) to create a space
where people are meant to add text. This is an awkward way to fill out a form for
everyone but especially so with a screen reader because the software reads "underline,
underline, underline, underline" for each and every underscore you used on each line.

Does the screen reader tell the user what to fill into the form fields?

If you don't know how to test with a screen reader, please submit your form to itdacad@mtsu.edu to test.

Check the reading order of forms

Tab order and proper labeling of form fields and buttons is important to those who
are blind or physically disabled.

To check the reading order of a form, try tabbing through the form. Does it land on
the form fields in the order someone would want to fill it out? If it doesn't you
will need to edit the order of the form fields.

Can you submit the form without using the mouse? (The keyboard command to activate
a button or link is the Enter key.)

If you cannot, is there another way, that is accessible to students who can't use
a mouse or those who are blind, for students to submit this information that is accessible
to them. Can they save it and email it to you, for example?

Math and Science

Write math and science equations accessibly

Mathematical equations and scientific notations must be written with MathType (an MS Office equation editor plugin) or Libre Office's native equation editor. Unfortunately,
Word's native equation editor does not create equations that can be read by screen
reading software.

Another option is the D2L equation editor. For more information, see the Math and Science Accessibility page.